


Aesthetics of her life

by speia



Series: The Literary Lab (Experimental Original Works) [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Body Image, Considerations upon social life, Dissociation, Gen, Good old angst like we love it all, I love my OCs tho, Medical Trauma, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Triggers, it's a bit metaphysical, tragic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-07-28 15:41:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16244717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speia/pseuds/speia
Summary: Aisthēsis: Ancient Greek, noun, αἲσθησις1) the action of perceiving through one’s senses, sensation2) organs of the senses, one of the five senses





	1. Taste

**Author's Note:**

> A short story inspired by my OC Evenia

What’s bounding you to the real world? Right, your senses. So how much can you afford to lose? How much do you think you can adapt? 

 

***

 

What if you lost your sense of taste? To be honest, you had never asked yourself that question. And like everyone else, you probably thought it wouldn't be that much of a big deal. Losing taste isn't really an impediment… is it?

You didn't notice anything at first. You had woken up and even if your body was hurting, because it was healing, because you were wounded, you barely noticed a thing. You could move every limb, of course very slowly and very carefully. But still, the sensations were here, it was responsive. And, of course, with the IV feeding you through your vein, you couldn’t notice something was wrong. You couldn't notice you were more damaged than you actually thought you were. Just a mere car crash, just a mere concussion, who could say it’d end up like that?

You noticed it with the first meal but you didn't actually pay attention to it. You were feeling nauseous, food was hard to swallow. You didn't get the taste of any of it but you assumed it was just the meds, the migraine, remnants of the shock,  _ something that’d pass _ . It didn't. You soon could eat as easy as everyone around you. Except it tasted like…  _ nothing _ . You were skeptical, you even tried eating food you actually disliked and… it tasted all the same. That was… weird. Of course you went to see a neurologist and went through a whole bunch of analyses and stuff. 

There was nothing wrong with your brain, or so they said. Might be psychological, they added. Psychological, my ass! What business your sense of taste could have with that random car accident you were caught in? 

Or maybe it wasn't because of the accident?

But you couldn't really remember what you were doing before you were caught in all this so you just brushed off the idea quickly.

You hadn't expected it to make you feel terribly depressed but it did. It was just the sense of taste, you had told yourself and your life was revolving around so much more than just eating, you would be fine… Yeah, what kind of a fool were you! After all, a normal person takes three meals a day, drinks at least one liter of water per day and not to mention coffee, tea, the little treats you usually take on breaks. Yes, there was so much more than just eating in your life but, still, eating was a big part of it. A too big part to be ignored. Not to mention everyone -  _ literally everyone _ \- is at some point having small talk about food. And what could you say, now you couldn't even tell what you liked, what you disliked?

It cut you from society. It cut you from your friends. It cut you from your family. It cut you from your colleagues. It prevented you from bonding with anyone. You didn't even dared to go for dates anymore. What could you do, if you were unable to enjoy a drink, a meal or even a cup of coffee? People weren't blind, they noticed something was wrong each time you sat at a table and tried to feed yourself. Eating nothingness was a challenge and you tried your best to feed yourself properly. But paradoxically the  _ nothingness  _ you were eating was making you feel terribly nauseous and you wanted to throw up. The good thing was, if you actually ended up puking, you never had to feel the acrid and acid taste of it anymore. So it wasn't all bad, you tried and failed to convince yourself.

And you lost weight. You were feeling hunger though, you  _ wanted _ and  _ needed _ to eat but…  _ but _ ! It was like gulping down dust and none of those stupid psychiatrists could even tell what was wrong with you, what was wrong with your subconscient or why your brain decided to annihilate your sense of taste of all things. What was the symbolism of taste? Did it even hold some kind of meaning? Yes, obviously! Why would you have lost it if not?

Unless fate was playing a terrible trick on you. Unless this was just a bad dream and you would just wake up, giggling nervously as you'd realize how stupid and stressful that nightmare actually was.

It wasn't a nightmare though. Things like that never were, you just wished they would be. So you had to do like everyone else: you had to cope with the shit life was pulling you through. Eating became a little easier each day, eating that dusty nothingness became bearable. You wouldn't dare to say you became used to it but that was the idea. At least to pretend you were. Even if there was no way on earth a decent human being could get used to something like that. It became part of your daily routine. And even if you started to care less about the kind of food you were actually putting in your belly, your health didn't seem to pay any price.

You didn't become used to it, you just chose not to care of such trivial things. After all, wasn't it just food? Worse, wasn't it just your own sense of taste? Wasn't it just your own brain tricking you into  _ liking  _ some edible species so you would take care of your basic needs? As if you'd let yourself die over things like that, really! How stupid…

How stupid you were to think you would convince yourself with such weak arguments. It worked for a time though, it really did. Pretending like everything you ate was the most delicious thing on earth, but really not all the food was good. And if you never grew ill, you sure were started to be sick of faking all your smiles. And to despise every little person who decided that offering you  _ chocolates _ on any occasion was probably the best gift ever. Since you seemed to enjoy food so much anyway, why would they bother looking for something else to offer you?

When did you become that kind of a joke?

Weren't you just trying to survive at first?

Didn't you just not want to die at first?

Wasn't it a basic instinct?

And yet, here you were. A complete fraud.

And yet you dealt with it. And yet you learnt how to live, being a fraud. Though you weren’t exactly happy. Far from it: you felt alone, lonely, left over. Leftover, how ironic…

 

***

 

And then you said you couldn't lose your sense of taste. It made you feel too bad, as if your entire body was slowly but surely becoming someone else's. And it didn't help you reach that higher state you were looking for. Okay, so be it.

But if you can't afford to lose taste, what can you afford to lose then?


	2. Smell

So what about your sense of smell? It’s probably less important than your sense of taste, you told yourself. It would be probably more bearable to live without it. Okay, no more perfume, no more of that delicious coffee smell you were used to wake up to. But really, wasn't it all  _ vain _ ?

 

***

 

So you woke up in that place again. This white ceiling gave you a strong feeling of déjà vu. Oh right, the car accident. That was the excuse for the  _ aesthetic  _ experiment. You blinked several times. So it was happening already. You were perceiving nothing. No smell of chemicals, no smell of food, drinks, soap, drugs even. Nothing that made hospitals smell like hospitals. Okay, good. You hated the smell of it to begin with, that was a good thing then. 

You were afraid it could have felt like a cold, when your nose was congested and was leaving you with a terrible feeling of suffocation. No, nothing of the sort. You could breathe quite easily and you were yourself quite surprised. And, contrary to losing your sense of taste, it wasn't an impediment in your everyday life. Of course, your sense of taste had become a little dull, for smell and taste are strongly linked, but you could  _ still tell the difference _ between the things you were eating. And you could eat normally again. Oh god it had felt like a lifetime! How could you really swallow food that tasted like nothing? No wonder you were feeling nauseous.

You were probably the only patient in the world who ate hospital food as if it was the most delicious thing on earth. But it had been long, too long. Sacrificing your sense of smell, just for that, was definitely worth it.

Or so you thought.

Smell is primal, instinctive. It tells you whether the food is still good to be eaten or not. It tells you whether there's something wrong or not in your environment. It helps you connect with people. You had forgotten about the hormonal part of it but it was hard to bond sexually with someone whose smell you couldn't perceive.

At first you called yourself stupid. Come on, you were human, a  _ social being _ , you could leave this hormonal low part at the door and get attracted to someone because of their mind, of their personality. Not because  _ you liked how they smell _ . But you were missing that carnal smell of desire and arousal. To be honest, you had completely forgotten how it smelt like. If it ever smelt like anything. 

Like you had completely forgotten how coffee smelt like or even that perfume you used to wear everyday. Speaking of which, you should get rid of it, since you tried to wear it, out of habit more than anything, but the look on your colleagues’ faces was enough to make you understand you had put too much on. Wasn't it five sprays? Maybe it was just three, you couldn't really remember. Was it even that strong to begin with? Something you couldn't tell anymore either.

Memory is also based on smell and you started to forget. You still knew what things were but at the same time… at the same time you didn't? You couldn't really explain it. But it left you with the feeling of a half-knowledge. And it was like your memories were full of holes you were no longer able to fill. 

And you hated it. Damn, you felt so powerless. But it wasn't as bad as losing your taste so you tried to make yourself see reason.

In vain.

You lacked something. Your life lacked something. You wouldn't have known, you wouldn't have begun to think smell was that important. You hated yourself though: you had whined, losing your sense of taste and now you were missing something less important, something that wasn't actually  _ cutting you from society  _ and yet you were still to complain! What was the point of that experiment if in the end you were just to complain? 

The point was getting to know the world from a complete different angle, the goal was to reach an higher state, the purpose was to go beyond your senses. In theory, it was that simple. But to live with, it was a nightmare.

You just wished you had all of your senses working like anyone else on that goddamn earth. Why you? What did you do to end up there? What didn't you do? Where did you fail? Where weren’t you enough? Were you ever enough to begin with? Or were they just trying to help you  _ reach this higher state _ because you were just a lost cause?

For a lost cause you were, to be depressed over such little things. How many persons lost smell after a concussion? How many persons lost the use of their limbs after a car crash? You were alive, and working all good! Wasn't it the time for you to stop complaining?

Wasn't it the time for you to stop being a selfish bitch? For fuck sake, you weren't  _ dying _ or anything!

Nevertheless you were missing the smell of rain on the autumn days, the smell of burning wood on the winter ones, the smell of flowers in the spring, the salty smell of the sea you were living by. Now the world only seemed like a beautiful and bright color palette. A noisy one too. But nothing you were bond to anymore. 

The memories of your lost sense of taste were too vivid for you not to shiver each time you realized how dull it was without the sense of smell as well. Would you end up losing it,  _ again _ ? No, no, no! You couldn't! You just couldn't! You had been there already! And you said no! You fucking said no!

But gods or fate don't really care. But gods or fate just do as they please. And if they wanted you to try living without smelling anything, then you'd live. And even if they wanted you to live without feeling anything at all, you'd just have to oblige.

After all, you were already dead. 

You were just there because they were allowing you to. Because gods like to make experiments on the human beings. Though you never actually understood why. Maybe the same kind of joy, the same thrill was coming down a scientist’s spine as he was pushing the buttons of that cage where the rats were kept. What could you know? You weren't a scientist yourself. You could just assume stuff.

Despite this outbursts of anxiety, more linked to your precious trauma than the actual loss your were currently experiencing, you were quite fine. And you started to hope it could stay like that.

You weren't a fraud.

You were still yourself.

A bit traumatized but still yourself.

And everyone around you was pretty much oblivious to you being dead already.

So please, make it stay that way!

You wish, bitch!

 

***

 

So you told them. You told them living without your sense was pretty much okay, that you missed it. But you hadn't been through a depressing phase, you had managed to get back on your feet pretty quick.

So you could afford to lose that.

But apparently they weren't happy with it.

Why?


	3. Hearing

Things started to get serious. Asking you to abandon your sense of hearing was on an entire different level. So far you had only lost senses that altered your way of perceiving the world. Losing your sense of taste cut you a bit from society but you still managed to communicate with the others.

And now they were asking you to go without hearing anything.  _ Hearing _ ! No music, no nothing!

You yelled you didn't want to go!

But they didn't listen to your request.

 

***

 

You blinked and for the third time your eyes opened onto that white ceiling. And this time you perceived the difference right when you woke up. No sound. Complete and utter silence. You tried to travel your fingers onto the bed sheets, to snap them, to talk even but your voice was (probably) hoarse and your throat ached when you tried to. 

Maybe the sounds you were making weren't loud enough for you to hear now but you didn't actually believed that. You were sure they had made you so deaf you wouldn't be able to hear the blast of a bomb even if it exploded just next to you. Still, you tugged on the electrodes on your chest and ripped them away. You assumed the monitor was loudly beeping at the loss of signal but of course you heard nothing. And your assumption was right for a nurse came running to see what was wrong.

A strong feeling of uneasiness started to invade your chest as you saw the woman’s lips moving, as you couldn't begin to perceive any sound or recognize any words. ‘Are you okay?’ perhaps she was asking. Something that would be natural to ask in such situation. Panic and horror overwhelmed you, taking over your entire being like a strong wave during a tsunami. 

You were hearing  _ nothing _ . You were understanding  _ nothing _ . You were trapped outside of the world.

You wanted to yell. To be honest, maybe you yelled. You opened your mouth. But as to say if sound actually passed the barrier of your lips, that was an entire other story.

So this time you stayed at the hospital longer. The medical staff was quick to spot out your condition. You weren't able to communicate, of course they would spot that quite easily. You were given treatment. You were even given a notebook to write down anything you might want to say. But writing complex sentences or elaborate thoughts was taking you too long - who would wait five minutes just to read you  _ talk about yourself _ ? - so what you  _ said _ remained very basic.

When you started to get better on the physical level (you always tended to forget that stupid car accident), they started giving you signing lessons. So you could  _ talk _ with your hands. So you wouldn't be completely dragged away from society. Though they were all pretty much aware of the psychological impact of it all for they had you seeing a shrink as well. A shrink! To someone who could no longer talk! Who barely knew how to sign! That was probably just a protocol thing. So the doctors wouldn't feel guilty of failing you.

Signing wasn't particularly hard. Once you got the hang of it, it became quite easy and you became quite quick at waving words with your hands and fingers. The real challenge was to find persons in your everyday life that were currently able to understand what all those strange movements could mean. People who could sign weren't galore. So you started to carry a notebook and a pen with you all the time.

Not being able to communicate was an obvious impediment but the lack of sounds was unbearable. It was like being locked in a prison of glass from where you could see the whole world without being a part of it. It felt like you didn't belong here. It felt like you were only a spectator of what was happening before your eyes. It was like being in a bubble, an unbreakable bubble. It felt like entrapment.

You thought you'd go mad. Not to mention a life without music was terribly dull, a life without sound was just driving you mad. You caught ryourself too often having the reflex to drum your fingers against the table or tapping your pen against your file. You caught yourself trying to make some noise. Of course you couldn't hear them. Of course everyone around you could and it was annoying. 

You were annoying.

You had nothing to say, you couldn't say anything. And even if you could wave what you had to voice, nobody truly bothered to try and understand what you could say. They always ended up pointing out the notebook, arching an interrogative brow. You were the hearing-impaired. You were the one to make efforts. Not them. Or at least this was what they thought.

You did try and went to those circles where the deaf and their families were bonding, trying to exchange, learn the complex signs. It bored you. You wanted to have this kind of conversation with your family, with your colleagues. Not with some strangers you barely knew and would ever barely know. And being able to  _ talk  _ only to people as impaired as you was heavy.

You were depressed. Terribly depressed. You were bad at reading lips but now TVs had this option where you can put subtitles for the hearing-impaired so you wouldn't even have to make any effort. Nothing was helping you dealing with your condition and you weren't even helping yourself.

For once you felt truly as if you were dead. How could they do, people who were born this way, people who became this way, to keep on living, to move on, as if nothing ever happened? How could they just smile naturally?

Maybe this experiment was failing because you were aware you were dead already. Because you were aware this would end somehow, that you would come back to a state where you had your five senses. Or so you hoped.

What after the experiment? Will you just die? They seemed to have some other big plan in mind, though.

So you basically waited. Waited until they decided the experiment lasted long enough. You weren't even trying anymore, you weren't even pretending to try and have a normal life despite the impediment they were forcing onto you. You just waited, and waited, doing nothing, feeling nothing. Feeling utterly depressed. Feeling more depressed than when you lost your sense of taste.

Feeling like you were nowhere, going nowhere.

Petrified. In deafening silence.

 

***

 

You were yelled at when they called you back but you expected it. After all you didn't exactly played by their rules this time, being blamed felt only logical. You had started not to care and you wondered if they ever thought about it in this big experiment of theirs. 

You made your report, just the same as you did before. You made sure to tell them you couldn't afford to lose your sense of hearing, that it was making you a prisoner of yourself. You made sure to tell them it shut you away from the world. You made sure to tell them this was why you stayed at home alone. 

So you couldn't lose your sense of hearing.

But the  _ aesthetic  _ experiment was far from being over.


	4. Touch

Next was touch then? Anything, though. You'd be ready to endure anything but going without your sense of hearing again. You never were happier than when you had heard them yell at you. You never were so happy to actually hear anything, you didn't really care about what they could be saying to you. 

But the sense of touch… Losing it could be tricky. Well, as long as you could  _ hear _ the world around you you didn't really mind the impediment. 

 

***

 

That white ceiling, for the fourth time. You started to ask yourself if you were actually waking up in the real world that they had rewinded for the purpose of this experiment or if they had put you in an alternate reality just to give you the impression you were always waking up at the exact same place, at the exact same time. Whatever. Each hypothesis implied an awful amount of godly powers you’d never obtain yourself.

This time as well you perceived the difference quickly. Of course. You were also quick to realize the impediment only affected your hands. You could feel the bed, the softness of the pillow under your head, the warmth of the blanket on your legs. But your hands… your hands were dead. You moved them before your eyes, clenched fists, opened them. You could feel them moving. But when you were travelling your thumb alongside the tip of your fingers you couldn't feel a thing. Weird. But at least it wasn't affecting all of your body. That would have been probably too much of an impediment. You would have been probably bedridden. After all, how could you walk if you couldn’t feel the floor under your feet? How could you evolve in a world you couldn't perceive by touch?

But it being your hands only didn't mean it was doable, far from it. Eating was a problem. Because you couldn't  _ grab  _ things since you couldn't feel anything. How much stuff did you break with those dead hands? You had lost count by now. You had developed strategies, telling with a single look at your fingers if your grip was firm or loose. You broke less stuff. But you were still terribly clumsy. 

This time too you stayed at the hospital longer. Reeducation, they said. Which didn't actually help. But no matter how many times you tried to tell and explain them your fingers would never feel things again, they never believed you. They were probably thinking you were being overdramatic. Which you weren't. To your very surprise, you weren't even feeling down or anything.

Did it mean you were starting to get used to this experiment you were undergoing? What kind of sick joke would that be, though you wouldn't be surprised if you actually  _ were _ getting used to it. 

You were resigned. That was the truth behind your attitude. Resigned. You had seen worse - losing your hearing - and better - losing your smell - so losing touch was probably a go-between you can handle. 

In fact you just no longer cared what could happen to you or what they would pull on you next time.

Contrary to the previous times, you had a hard time with your job. Even deaf, you had managed to keep working and your company was so glad to have you work as one of those impaired employees every company was supposed to hire at some point. But now… Now that wasn't the same. First, you couldn't handle a pen very well so you couldn't write. Not to mention, for you couldn't feel the pressure you were giving the pen, you tore the sheets more than once. You tried to exercise at home, by looking at your fingers, trying to come up with strategies or something but apparently writing was too much of a precise gesture for you to perform now.

All that was left was the computer. You thought it'd be okay, honestly just pushing keys couldn't be that hard, even if your hands had lost all their sense. Fool, how wrong you were! Pushing keys also was a precise gesture. Well, not as much as writing so  _ here _ you managed to come up with a strategy. You were just terribly slow. A snail would have done a better job for sure! And if your employers never had dared to reproach you anything when you were deaf - for you were  _ obviously impaired _ after all - here they didn't even think twice before starting yelling at you. 

Okay, sure, you were making a lot of typos. But was it really the end of the world? It sure wasn't for you. This life was just temporary after all. It'd end somehow and then it'd all be rewinding and you'd wake up, looking at that white ceiling for the fifth time. Or maybe not. You had only one sense left to lose after all.

You didn't want to think about such things and tried to focus on catching objects without feeling them. And you were staring at your hands a bit too long, a bit too often. You were looking at them as if they weren't yours. Were they, if you couldn't feel through them? Were they, if you could no longer make use of them?

If you dared to be a little crude, you'd say even touching yourself was feeling weird with those hands.

Your dead hands weren’t really driving you crazy like your lost sense of hearing could have been, at least. Or it was more subtle, more mischievous and you weren't really paying attention to it. Why should you? It was only a matter of days. 

You should probably go on dates. Once, at least just once. So you could tell what it feels like - or, to be more precise, what it  _ doesn't feel like _ \- to touch someone with those hands of yours. And, guess what, maybe it'd (paradoxically) feel good! 

Were you enough of a fool to think you would convince yourself with such poor arguments? If you just wanted to bond physically with someone, you actually didn't need such a lame excuse. You were an adult, and you knew what they say about the things that occur between two consenting adults.

You just weren't strong enough to take the leap. You had lost count but how many days had passed since the experiment started? Was it weeks? Was it months? Was it a year? More? Less? That stupid rewinding! They were doing it on purpose!

When did you die again? Could you at least remember that?

Of course not. You could remember before, you could remember after. But you couldn't remember the very moment of your death. Made sense in a way. But still very frustrating.

So frustrating you broke a pencil, again. And there were splinters in the palm of your hand. And blood everywhere. Not that you were feeling anything anyway.

Yes, you were that resigned.

 

***

 

And again you made your report. Losing your sense of touch sure wasn't easy in your everyday life but after having lost your sense of hearing it almost felt like a walk in the park. You wouldn't mind losing it, you made sure to tell them that.

But they didn't like it. They said it just made you clumsy. Well, they weren't wrong. You remained basically the same the entire time the experiment lasted. No mood variations, no change in your way to see the world. The same. But clumsier.

So you'd just have to see what was next, uh?

See? Oh no, not really!


	5. Sight

So, this was the end. The last one, the last lost sense. And then… then what? No, you shouldn’t think about things like that. You should enjoy this life while it lasted. Enjoy. Life. A life with no sight, was there really something to enjoy about that? Yes, probably. There was probably something to enjoy about anything. You’d find something to enjoy about it. After all, this was the last part of this experiment.

After all, after that you’d be just…

 

***

 

Okay, right. You had to admit: you expected to wake up in front of that white ceiling for a fifth time. Of course it wouldn’t happen. Not this time. It couldn’t. But your eyes opened though. They opened for sure. You even blinked several times. Just in case, you know. Not that it would change something, anything. But just to make sure you’d realize. It was pitch black. As if your eyelids were closed. You were a little afraid. 

But just a little.

You had woken up in this room four times already, you knew the drill. Or at least you thought you did. You knew where the furnitures were, where the door was, where the bed table was, what color the sheets looked like. You knew everything about that room. So even if you couldn’t see, you were pretty confident.

But of course nothing went the way you expected it to be.

The room was different.  _ They made _ the room different. They had thought about it, the bitches, they had thought about it all. How lost they wanted you to be? Were they laughing at you from where they were watching? Probably. You were just a labrat to them, after all. Not human. Just a fucking labrat.

You fumbled with the sheets. Where was it? Where was that stupid emergency button? Your hand hit the bed rail several times but you didn’t go easy on yourself. The button. The fucking button! You found something, something made of plastic. Okay, that should be it. You pushed it several times before letting it go, your fingers still fumbling around, just in case it wasn’t the right button, just in case it was just something  _ they _ had put in the way to make you even more  _ lost _ .

Maybe you weren’t even in a hospital room to begin with. How could be sure where you were, now you couldn’t see a thing?

You started to get paranoid, more and more as the seconds passed by. You tried to make yourself see - what a poor choice of words! - reason: you had woken up in a hospital bed each and every time before, they had you go back to civil life each and every time before. They was no reason, no fucking reason, they wouldn’t do exactly the same for the last part of their big experiment. You had to be  _ in _ the world, you had to interact with it, being impaired and all. So you would remain in the world, you knew. There was really nothing to worry about.

But still, you were started to get paranoid.

For maybe they just wanted to torture you, maybe they just wanted you to go through the worst, maybe the experiment was just an excuse for them to laugh at you and have some fun. 

But of course, you were just paranoid. A nurse came, and like every time before, people looked after you. Like every time before, they helped you. Like every time before, you were treated kindly. 

They just had changed the staging of the room. Nothing to worry about, really.

Being blind was frustrating. Terribly frustrating. Like you never expected it to be. At first, you couldn’t even do a single thing on your own. You couldn’t eat, you couldn’t drink, you couldn’t even go to the fucking bathroom! You had to be helped, for each and every little action you wanted to make. For each and every little thing you wanted to get a hold onto. And you couldn’t read anymore, and you couldn’t watch TV anymore. At least you had the music, at least you had the radio.

And the more the days passed, the least you were bumping into things. 

Maybe the staging of the room wasn’t different to begin with, maybe you were the one who remembered it wrong.

Now you were no longer paranoid. Now you were strongly doubting yourself.

You learnt the Braille code. Easy, it was terribly easy. It felt like, without your sight, your sense of touch had increased. It felt like - okay, that sounds pretty strange - like you could  _ touch the words _ . And by touching them, it was like they were appearing in the darkness you were seeing now. If that made actually sense… 

You had an help with you, on the first days you were discharged. A woman that helped you get used to your new surroundings, helped you get used to walk around the neighborhood with your stick, and your dog, helped you with little tricks to bath, eat, drink… To tell the truth, your neighborhood hadn’t gotten any different, they didn’t move you away. It was just the same, like your own house was just the same. 

It was just you who thought it was different. 

Because you were no longer seeing it, you were no longer perceiving it with your own two eyes, it was just like you had landed on another planet. 

You didn’t feel shut out from the world, like you expected to be. You just felt like the world had changed. You were the one changing, you knew that very well, you weren’t  _ that stupid _ or  _ that oblivious _ . But the entire world was now different to you. It was like you could now see, but with your hands. 

You weren’t depressed. You could still read with your fingers and you weren’t missing the TV as much as you had thought. It was overrated after all. But you weren’t depressed at all. You sure had felt a little down at some point but that went easily. You were intrigued, to say the least, curious even. Curious to see - another poor choice of word! - how you would perceive this or that object you were so used to before.

You were just missing writing. And you were missing the brightness of colors. Of course it wouldn’t be all good, you were supposed to be  _ impaired _ after all. 

But yet you could hear. But yet you could touch. 

And men weren’t disgusted by a blind girl. Some even found it fascinating. For once, you felt somehow great, being the way you were. 

A shame that experiment had to end this quickly.

 

***

 

That time you were truly frightened when they called you back. That time you actually didn’t want to come back. First, because being blind wasn’t that bad, you could easily live with it. Second, because the experiment had now come to an end. You had your five senses back. And now what? Now  _ what _ ?

You didn’t want to die, you surely didn’t want to die! That was so unfair, to have you kept alive and yet… No, no, you couldn’t die like that! You couldn’t die as a fucking labrat! There was no fucking way! 

But lucky you, you didn’t die a labrat.

But lucky you, you just became one of them, those divine creatures. Creatures so divine, they were even called  _ death _ . 

One of them.

Seeing the world with your own two hands. 


End file.
